Читать книгу Dead And Buried: A True Story Of Serial Rape And Murder - Corey Mitchell - Страница 31

TWENTY-ONE

Back on the farm with his father was the last place Rex Krebs wanted to be. In 1978 Rex attended fifth grade at the Northside Bonner County School, which catered to the childrenin the rural areas of Sandpoint. Many of the kids, like Rex, rode a bus in to school from several miles away. There were at least 150 other students, most of them farm children from the valley area, and some of the poor kids from the area known as the Huckleberry Commune who also commuted to school.

Rex did not make many friends at Northside. He tended to be a loner and an outcast. Most of his fellow elementary school classmates would snicker at his clothes, which always seemed to be dirty or disheveled. Sometimes it appeared as if Rex did not bathe for school either. Most of the kids stayed away from him.

Anthony Poelstra met Rex Krebs in third grade at NorthsideElementary. He had classes with him for five years. He recalled that Rex was a bit of a loner whom the other kids picked on. Sometimes the other kids would “antagonize him to fight,” Poelstra recalled. However, he did not think the teasing toward Rex was harsher than what some other kids received.Poelstra stated that Krebs definitely reacted negatively when the bigger kids picked on him.

Another student who noticed Rex’s outsider status was classmate Debbie Simmons, now Debbie Rogers. Debbie’s best friend, Rebecca Wise, lived down the road from the Krebs family farm. The two girls often rode their bicycles down to a creek near the Krebs farm. Many times they saw Rex standing out in the field by himself. Sometimes Rex would walk up to the road and speak to the girls. They tried to get him to come to the creek with them, but he always begged out. Debbie noticed that Rex usually looked nervous and constantly glanced over his shoulder back toward his house. He was making sure that his father did not see him speaking to the girls.

Debbie also saw Rex look nervous at school. Her impressionwas that other kids picked on him for his out-of-style appearance. “Whether it be he didn’t have the right pair of shoes, or they didn’t fit appropriately, or his hair wasn’t clean enough or the right style,” Debbie recalled that Rex just did not fit in.

“There were a couple of people that would often antagonizeuntil they could get him to react and then they would step back,” Debbie remembered. “It would look like he was the one doing the picking, or being the antagonizer, and then he would get in trouble and they would go laugh in the corner.”

Debbie Rogers and Anthony Poelstra recalled seeing bruises on Rex. At different times they both noticed that Rex had big scrapes on his arms. Neither was sure if they were the normal scrapes and bumps of a young boy. Debbie Rogers had suspicions, however, about the black eyes that Rex occasionallysported.

Dorothy Thompson, Northside Bonner County School’s principal, remembered that Rex made several visits to her office.It was not for disciplinary reasons, as may be expected.

“He seemed to be a lonesome boy for attention from adults,” Thompson recalled. “He would come in, and our secretary,who had been there several years, so she knew him well, and he would come there and stand at the desk and just kind of want to talk to her. She would encourage him and so he was in the office very often.”

Other than hiding out in Principal Thompson’s office for company, Rex did not fit in anywhere. His dad berated him and beat him at home. His classmates taunted him at school. Only one person became his friend. Jimmy Maddox. Unfortunately,Jimmy would only attend Northside for a couple of years, but when the two were together, they stuck together. As outsiders, they had to.